Unlike other child and adolescent development textbooks, Child and Adolescent Development for Future Educators by Judith Meece is written specifically for teacher education majors and for professionals in the field of education. It focuses entirely on the development of school-age children and youth, and provides deep coverage of those topics of most immediate concern to teachers such as cognitive development, social and emotional development, language development, literacy, individual differences in development, and children with special needs. Few texts provide this depth of coverage. The author is an expert in teacher education, having taught child and adolescent development to education majors for over fourteen years.

Child and Adolescent Development for Future Educators also helps students to see how developmental research can be applied in educational settings. Each chapter discusses the implication of research for teaching, and the text includes pedagogical features focusing on teaching applications. It is the only development textbook that emphasizes applications to educational settings in this way. For the revision, new material has been added throughout the text, including a completely new chapter on peers and families and the expansion of the content on personal, social and moral development into two chapters. By the end of the text, students will have a clear understanding of the important role of schools and teachers in childrens lives.